ROLE
Primary Designer
TIMEFRAME
December 2024 - Ongoing
THE PROBLEM
Interface Designer has been a core part of Appian’s workflow for over a decade, but beyond small tweaks, the UI creation experience hadn’t seen a true update. Over time, several challenges became clear:
Performance was a notorious challenge, especially when working with our low-code tools
Discoverability was limited, and new learners especially struggled to understand what was possible to build
Visual design was no longer up to our latest standards, and Interface Designer was starting to show its age
OUR APPROACH
Picking up a widely used area of the product meant receiving a hefty wish list of improvements. To make meaningful impact, we had to be strategic in identifying what problems users had to come up with a prioritization strategy to bring to stakeholders.
Working alongside my Product Manager, we reached out to a variety of users, including experienced Architects, new learners, instructors, and trainers, to get their take on current pain points.
From this exploration, along with countless workshops and pencil sketches, we arrived at a path forward that delivered incremental value while working towards a new vision.
TRANSFORMATION
We launched our first version of the updated Interface Designer at the annual Appian conference.
Introducing a new way to configure a multi-step form, alongside visual configuration controls
Users can now preview site branding configurations in Interface Designer itself, rather than having to rely on the published site to view changes
While our goal was to improve the editing experience, we saw this as an opportunity to leave the wider product better than we left it. To create a consistent Appian designer experience, we updated other objects to have the same gradient header.
IMPACT
Our performance improvements saw tremendous improvement thanks to our incredible dev team.
Not only that, but our changes are resonating with users.
"Okay, just playing with the newest site, Interface Designer is feeling LOVELY. It's much more enjoyable to use, and the speed of the config changes is so nice. Feels like it's keeping up."
"Before I wouldn't show Interface Designer during customer demos, but with these changes, I'm comfortable demoing it."
"“From the kid who’s left out at school and never picked for cool projects, Interface Designer has become the star of the show"
LOOKING AHEAD
Our efforts are paying off and sparking more investment in other areas of the product to raise the visual standard of our designs.
While we've made significant improvements, we still have more exciting updates in the works. Stay tuned for more!